Five years, ago, on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, I posted a letter written by my friend and D-Day veteran Bill Kays to President Obama. In it, Bill asked Obama to pay tribute to the sacrifices of the Soviets on the Eastern Front, without whose efforts Bill probably would have been killed by Nazi defenders on Omaha Beach. I am sad to report that Bill died on September 9, 2018. One of the best ways we can pay tribute to his memory and his sacrifices is to work toward building a more peaceful world so that no one ever has to face the horror that he did on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Continue reading →

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My last post described how just 600 motivated voters helped get the New START arms control treaty passed in 2010, and asked you to work in a similar way to help prevent a second Korean War. There has been good news in the two weeks since that post. I am writing now to relay that news and provide more details on how you can work most effectively in this critically needed effort. Continue reading →

I am writing to ask you to help prevent a second Korean War by supporting a critically needed bill that will prevent President Trump from attacking North Korea without Congressional approval. Your ability to have that big an impact may sound farfetched, so I’ll start with some background showing how just 600 Georgia voters helped get the New START arms control treaty passed in 2010. This is described in endnote 149 of my book, co-authored with my wife Dorothie (click for free PDF): Continue reading →

In Monday’s speech about Afghanistan Pres. Trump assured his audience, “In the end, we will win.” Since he did not define what victory might look like or how we might achieve it, I’ll offer a suggestion on how to start: Ask more questions.

If our nation had done that in 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, we might well have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which were plotted in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden, whom we earlier had supported as a “freedom fighter. We also might well have avoided our current quagmire—our longest war ever.Continue reading →

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In business, a company gets into trouble when it starts believing its own BS. The same is true for a nation, except there “bankruptcy” can mean war, possibly nuclear. To prevent needless wars and ultimately to save the planet, we as a nation need to stop believing our own BS. The seven international case studies in our book provide many examples (click for free PDF and see pages 169-223), and recent articles in TIME and the New York Times highlight the problem, unfortunately by example, not by correcting the problem.Continue reading →

The media tells us that nuclear diplomacy with North Korea is a waste of time, as do most high officials from every recent US administration. But easily verifiable facts show otherwise. The most important data point: North Korea did not do its first nuclear test until four years after Pres. Bush tore up our nuclear agreement with the North, known as the 1994 Agreed Framework. Continue reading →